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There are mothers with full-time jobs who go hungry in order to feed their kids.

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SEIU

It can be easy to forget that real people lie at the center of every movement.

From the fight for religious freedom to the ongoing struggles for racial, gender, and socioeconomic equality, these movements are carried by regular people: mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, and friends who are working every day to make their voices heard.

The Fight for $15 is no different. It's about people fighting to survive.

Take, for instance, Adriana, a mother who has worked at McDonald's for five years.



Adriana's take-home pay for one two-week, full-time pay period was $508.38.

And like all of us, she has bills to pay.

She pays $100 per week in childcare for her son. Heat and water cost her $300 per month, and her rent is $500. With expenses for just those necessities already exceeding more than twice what she brought home for that two-week pay period — how is she supposed to pay for groceries? Emergency medical care? Internet so that her son can get his homework done? It's almost impossible.

What are workers supposed to do when they're working 40+ hours per week, doing necessary jobs, only to find that they're unable to make ends meet?

The minimum wage in the U.S. varies state by state; as of May 2016, it ranges from $7.25 to $10.50 per hour (with D.C. set to bump up to $11.50 on July 1). While some states do have slight increases scheduled years away, the sad reality is that with cost of living on the rise, it's still not enough to be a livable wage. So what does that mean?

There are veterans with full-time jobs who can't afford food.

There are parents who can only feed their kids if they themselves don't eat.

Or who give up everything so that their kids don't have to.

The people fighting for $15 work hard. They make multibillion-dollar corporations those billions of dollars.

Now, they're just asking to be compensated for it and for the freedom to form a union so they can get a seat at the table with the corporate CEOs who make so many decisions that affect their lives. They're fighting for their families and better pay so they can put money back into their neighborhoods. So they can strengthen and boost their local economy.

There's a long way to go, but the tides are turning.

New York and California have agreed to the $15 minimum wage. Thousands of workers in Pennsylvania are seeing their wages increase to $15 an hour. And the more these stories are heard, the stronger the voices of the thousands of people who are fighting for nothing more than the ability to survive can become.

If enough people stand behind them and share their stories, corporations will have no choice but to listen.


Time travel back to 1905.

Back in 1905, a book called "The Apples of New York" was published by the New York State Department of Agriculture. It featured hundreds of apple varieties of all shapes, colors, and sizes, including Thomas Jefferson's personal favorite, the Esopus Spitzenburg.






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Melissa Pateras is known on Tiktok for her laundry knowledge. Seriously, her ability to fold laundry is hypnotizing. This time, she created a video explaining what actually takes place at the dry cleaner and the internet is aghast.

Before Pateras explained what happens in the mysterious world behind the counter of a dry cleaner, she asked a few of her friends what they thought dry cleaning was. Their answers were...interesting to say the least.

One friend surmised, "You put it in a box, right...and then you let some wind, really fast wind, blow around on your clothes and it wipes off all the dirt." The friend, whose username is @unlearn16, continued with her working hypothesis, saying that the clothes are then blasted with infrared heat to sterilize the garments. While that is certainly an interesting theory, that's not what happens.

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Doberman's blissful reaction while getting pampered at bathtime goes viral

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Representative Image from Canva

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Let’s face it, Hollywood has given Doberman’s a bad reputation. So often they are depicted as the canine henchman to the evil villain, that many people assume that’s their temperament in real life.

But the truth is: like just about every dog on the planet, Dobermans are sweet, loyal and affectionate canine companions. And, much like Pit Bulls, they are not nearly as inherently aggressive as pop culture makes them out to be—especially when properly trained.

I mean, just take a look at Atlas. This goodest of good bois recently went viral on TikTok while getting a nice, relaxing bathtime session. He proved that not only are Doberman’s capable of extreme levels of chill, they can have a deep felt appreciation for some good old fashioned pampering.

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The sense of your body not belonging to only you can start during pregnancy. Everything you do directly affects your developing fetus, and once the baby is born, it needs a lot of physical contact for proper brain, social, and emotional development. So babies are held a lot outside of feedings. Those babies turn into toddlers who then turn into early school agers, all of whom rely very heavily on co-regulation of their emotions and being physically near their parent to feel safe.

It's pretty much a constant state of being touched throughout much of the day. When psychologist, Dr. Raquel Martin reveals she too feels touched out in a video on Instagram, parents across the internet felt validated.

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For those in the military, sleep can mean the difference between life and death. But shut-eye can be very hard to come by, especially during active conflict.

According to Sharon Ackman, the U.S. Navy Pre-Flight School developed a scientific method to help its pilots fall asleep. Through this technique, 96% of the pilots were able to fall asleep in two minutes or less.

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